


Silphium

by LeilaKalomi



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: America, Angst, Bad poetry references (sorry T.S. Eliot!), Covid-19 pandemic, Crack Treated Seriously, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Episode: Good Omens: Lockdown, Idiots in Love, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Plants, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), bad scents, extinct plants, i am who i am, more specifically crack treated as angst, sephora - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:01:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29539290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeilaKalomi/pseuds/LeilaKalomi
Summary: The putrid scent of a long-extinct flower catapults Crowley back through the ages as he laments the end of his hope for a romance with Aziraphale.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 55





	Silphium

**Author's Note:**

> This is what I do with a crack prompt (At a Sephora, Crowley tries to recapture the terrible scent of some extinct plant that smells like Aziraphale, alienating and annoying various humans due to the terrible smell). 
> 
> Thanks charlottemadison, racketghost, Anti_Kate, and Liquid_Lyrium. And thanks again Liquid_Lyrium for your beta-read!

He has a flash of it when they’re standing on the airfield. It’s just an illusion, Crowley knows, even as he lets his mouth open a little to taste the scent: ozone mixed with brimstone—the only way he can bear either. _Silphium_ , he thinks, even though it’s not quite the same smell, even though it barely matters, because Aziraphale is standing right beside him, and if the impossible doesn’t happen, they’ll never see each other again. Even though he’s all but bared his soul. And if they do make it, well. Maybe that’s just as frightening. Only, he has to get there first. So he puts it aside, and concentrates.

* * *

A day later, they’re sitting at the Ritz—not their usual lunch, but dinner this time, like Aziraphale had once promised—and Crowley can’t help but smile across the table at him and toast the world. Big beautiful world, where they can both be. Together.

He eyes Aziraphale’s hand on the table, tracks its motion, every time it lifts and resettles. Never any closer to his own.

Crowley walks him home. He sits across from him on the sofa while Aziraphale pours him Château Lafite and pontificates about something. Crowley barely knows what, though he’s sure he responds correctly, says what he needs to. He’s still elated, even if he _is_ waiting.

Even if what he’s waiting for never seems to come:

He goes home that night and doesn’t see Aziraphale again until Christmas. That’s how long it takes him to call. That’s how long it takes for him to think again of Crowley. Crowley tries not to think of him, either. Instead, he thinks of his silphium plant, the one he’d given Aziraphale. He wishes again that he had kept it, that he had it still. He should have known better. He shouldn’t have expected anything to change.

* * *

**537 A.D.**

_“Hello!”_

_Crowley recognized the voice immediately._

_“I, Sir Aziraphale, of the Table Round, am here to speak to the Black Knight.”_

_Crowley’s heart sped up foolishly. The best course of action, Crowley determined, was to pretend he_ wasn’t _himself. He simply wouldn’t let on. He pitched his voice deep and spoke._

_“You have sought the Black Knight, foolish one. But you have found your death.”_

_That_ usually _did it. It had been surprisingly easy fomenting unrest here._

_But Aziraphale frowned, his intelligent eyes narrowing._

_“Is that you under there, Crawly?”_

_And there was disappointment, yes, and a flicker of something else that Crowley would not examine, but oh, how that_ Crawly _stung. Aziraphale had forgotten him._

_“Crowley,” he snapped._

_When the idea came to him—a business arrangement, a way for them to work together—he knew better than to push. He stood in the fog with his repellent companions and watched Aziraphale walk away. It had been nearly five hundred years. Crowley was fine. He’d hardly thought of Aziraphale since Rome._

_In his tent, he sat by a flickering lamp and stared at his silphium plant, leaning in for a good whiff when he really wanted to drive home the pain. That stupid angel had embedded himself into Crowley’s very being. There would never be any getting rid of this._ _The best thing was to do what he’d been doing for five hundred years—try to forget about him. He’d been doing fine. He just needed to forget about today._

_The plant always made him feel weak, jittery, and it must have put him to sleep, because suddenly there was a warm glow around him, gentle hands on his shoulders, the touch of them warm even through the layers of wool and leather he wore._

_“Wake_ up _, Crowley,” Aziraphale was saying. He was annoyed enough that Crowley thought maybe it wasn’t a dream._

_“Angel,” he said, breathily. He could not stop the smile creeping across his face._

_“Crowley. My goodness. Must you_ sleep _?”_

_“Good way to pass the time out here. Bit damp, I think you noticed yourself, earlier.”_

_“Listen to me.” Aziraphale looked over at the silphium plant, and kept his eyes trained there instead of on Crowley’s face. He did not seem to register what he was seeing, because he did not react to the sight. “I think—your suggestion earlier... Well. It may not have been such a terrible idea.”_

_“Yeah?” Crowley sat up, brushing at his hair. “So, we have a deal?”_

_“We have...an arrangement,” Aziraphale said. “A business arrangement. Of sorts.”_

_“Then I guess I should...commemorate the occasion,” Crowley said, grinning. He’d see him all the time now. No more of this five hundred years nonsense. He felt elated, could scarcely believe his luck. He found his clay cups and poured them ale._

_They drank and talked. Crowley did not push. He was very proud that he did not push._

_At some point, when they were both drunk and light had just illuminated the horizon, Crowley handed the silphium plant to Aziraphale._

_Aziraphale frowned._

_“What—?” he began, and it was true they had never given each other anything. Crowley, drunk, suddenly remembered why: He could not have stood it if Aziraphale had refused him. Not again. It was better not to ask._

_“Silphium,” Crowley said now, desperate, casting about for anything he could think of to make things fun and easy again, to make Aziraphale say yes. “Thought you liked it.”_

_“Oh! Oh! I did enjoy the...the oil.” Aziraphale leaned in, smelling the leaves, the flower. “Oh yes! But my dear boy, how did you—silphium is quite extinct!”_

_He wondered if Aziraphale remembered Rome. Crowley did. He thought of it every day. He tried not to, but he was too drunk, in this moment, not to know the truth of it. “ ’S not extinct for_ you _, angel,” Crowley said. “Couldn’t let it die.”_

_And all right, maybe that had been a bit much. Aziraphale’s smile faltered, and he left not long after. But he took the plant with him, and Crowley could have sworn he was blushing. Though he supposed it could have been the alcohol. They hadn’t known how to sober up back then._

* * *

After Christmas, though, something really does change. They’re in each other’s company more and more, first Christmas, then the New Year and champagne and an angel asleep on the sofa of Crowley’s flat, miracled pillow-soft and comfortable. Crowley would never expect the angel to appreciate his punishing aesthetic. After all, Aziraphale doesn’t deserve to be punished. Not the way Crowley has been. Not ever.

“You slept,” Crowley says, emerging from his bedroom on the first day of 2020. It’s gray and cold out, and Crowley is only in a lacy silk camisole and pajama shorts. But all Crowley can see is sunshine, all he can feel is warmth. Aziraphale sits up, rubbing his eyes, looking around him like he’s seeing the newness of the year, like they haven’t seen more than six thousand new years. But this _is_ new. Aziraphale picks up his bow tie from the coffee table and puts it around his collar. Crowley has never seen Aziraphale sleep. Has never woken to him here in the morning—not by choice. He has never watched him dress, not even this much.

“I wanted to try it,” Aziraphale says. He raises his chin as if in challenge, but Crowley spots the two peaks of red forming on his cheeks.

“And?”

“It was...refreshing, somehow. Though I do still feel some lingering effects. As if I might sleep...rather more?”

“Normal,” Crowley says. As if for effect, he yawns, stretching his arms out wide, then up, as he moves into the room, snaps his fingers for clothes (not wanting to make the angel uncomfortable), and sits down beside Aziraphale.

“What time is it?” Aziraphale asks, before reaching into his pocket for his watch. Crowley glances down at his own, but it takes him too long to find the London time amid all of what Aziraphale calls the “bells and bobs.”

“Should we...get some lunch?” Crowley asks. His heart pounds. If Aziraphale says no, the day will recede into grayness, into boredom and the encroaching realization, one Crowley is trying his hardest to stave off, that six thousand years of yearning can still end with nothing but a whimper.

But Aziraphale says yes that day. And the next few weeks are wonderful. But then in March, the humans start talking about some virus, and Crowley doesn’t hear from him so much.

He skulks around his flat, bored during the lockdown, but afraid to call Aziraphale. The angel is probably out trying to do good. Trying to help people, and Crowley would never fault him for that. It’s who he is. He’d never want him to change.

When he finally calls, he tells Crowley not to come over. But not for any _reason_ , not because he’s _busy_ , because it’s _against the rules_. The godforsaken—and _hadn’t they forsaken them?—_ rules.

Crowley sleeps until October, then surprised it’s allowed, he buys a ticket to America, trying to tell himself that it means something that he’s setting a bad example by flying in the middle of a pandemic. Instead of going to the airport, he walks to Soho and stands on the pavement in front of Aziraphale’s bookshop. He doesn’t go inside. If Aziraphale wanted to see him, he’d know. The last thing he’d said on the subject was for Crowley not to come, so he knows he should respect that. He doesn’t want to walk back to Mayfair, doesn’t want to leave the Bentley parked at the airport. He takes a cab.

It takes him a few days to come out of his Airbnb. He had not paid much attention to where he was renting, only knows that he has come to a place where there is no mask mandate, only minimal restrictions. He types “shopping mall” into Google Maps on his mobile and drives the horrible red rental car to sit outside the nearest one.

He watches the people coming and going, some of them wearing masks, some not. Instead of casting a ward to keep their attention off him, he removes his sunglasses. It seems to work just as well—he doesn’t draw as much attention from inside his car. On Halloween, he watches as people wear costumes into the mall. One night, after drinking a full bottle of Talisker behind the wheel as he people-watches, he nearly falls asleep in his car. He wakes to a banging on his window, a man in a blue uniform and a mask down below his nose is angrily demanding that he move elsewhere.

“You can’t sleep here,” he says, shaking his head, as if he’s personally affronted. Crowley hopes he is. “Move along.”

Instead, Crowley gets out, letting his empty whisky bottle clatter to the ground. The security guy looks alarmed, but Crowley just grins to himself at the loud bang that the man’s security vehicle emits, and at shout the man gives when he whirls to see what’s happened, and finds four flat tires.

Crowley walks away, feeling proud of the destruction he’s leaving in his wake, rather like James Bond, he thinks, leaving an explosion just a second before it would have been too late.

Too late. He tries not to dwell on that concept.

But he can’t _not_. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, except that now Halloween is over, all the decorations are for Christmas, and all he can think about is last Christmas, how Aziraphale had cooked a goose, and they’d sat at the little table in his flat above the bookshop (which Crowley had never even seen before!) and eaten, and smiled at each other, and he’d felt the warm little flame in his heart that he’d guarded for all these years flare into something white hot and blinding.

 _What would he do_ , he’d wondered, _if I kissed him now?_

Instead, he’d finished the food Aziraphale had served him, hoping Aziraphale would understand what that meant. Then five days later, he’d invited Aziraphale for the New Year, expecting him to decline. This wasn’t on, he didn’t think, not really. Christmas had been a fluke. But Aziraphale said yes, and more than that, Aziraphale told him he’d liked their Christmas together— _our Christmas together_ , he’d really said that—and asked if he’d like to meet for lunch.

Then he’d woken up New Year’s Day in Crowley’s apartment and they’d had lunch that day too. Then a week later, a trip to the theater, a walk in the park. Crowley hadn’t remarked on Valentine’s Day. He had not wanted to rush Aziraphale, to crowd him or pressure him. Aziraphale hadn’t mentioned it either.

Now Crowley wonders if he should have. Wouldn’t be any _worse_ off, he reckoned.

As he walks through the mall, his hand moves toward his pocket. Maybe he can—

What? Text Aziraphale? Oh, right, how would that go? _I love you_. In a fucking text?

Call Aziraphale? _Oh, hey, I’m in some flyover part of the States where only like half of the humans are wearing a mask and none of them like my trousers, let me tell you. Want to come join me? By the way, you know that thing that happened in Rome that we don’t talk about? Let’s talk about it._

 _No._ No to all of it: Aziraphale in America. Aziraphale around maskless people—he’d never take a moment to focus on Crowley. No to talking about Rome.

He’s _thinking_ about Rome, though, and maybe that’s why when he catches a whiff of something not ozone, not brimstone, but the _other_ note—the cloying note—of the silphium, he’s catapulted right back to it.

* * *

**38 A.D.**

_The water was warm. After they’d sat for a while, Aziraphale’s eyes scrupulously anywhere but on Crowley’s body, Crowley extended a leg outside of the water, and searched his face for any sign of a reaction. It was not his face, however, where the reaction was most noticeable._

_Crowley swallowed, savoring the moment before he proceeded, eyes resolutely fixed downward, on what he could see beneath the water._

_“Oh,_ angel _,” Crowley chastised, gently. “Thanks_ ever so _for the oysters, but it looks like there’s something I could tempt you to, as well.”_

 _“_ Crowley _,” Aziraphale hissed. He turned his body away and reached for one of the thick cloths folded at the edge of the natatio to cover himself. “I’m_ going _.”_

_Crowley watched him, unabashed, the flex of his thighs as he hefted himself out of the pool and rose to standing, the way his balls swung even with his cock half-stiff from the sight of Crowley._

_“Guess I’ll have to go then, too,” Crowley said, turning to hoist himself out. But Aziraphale froze. He did not turn away, affording Crowley a moment to trail his eyes over that ample, soft backside._

_“_ Please, _” Aziraphale said, and the word was so desperate, so plaintive, that Crowley froze too. “Give me just a moment.”_

 _Crowley nodded, even though Aziraphale did not look back. He waited, allowed Aziraphale to disappear into the apodyterium, and took a few slow breaths. So that had gone down like a lead balloon. He shouldn’t have rushed him. He knew he shouldn’t have rushed him. There was, after all, nowhere this could_ go _. So maybe it was better not to get there._

 _After about ten minutes, the time it takes a typical human body to reach orgasm (Crowley did flatter himself, thank you very much, even though he wasn’t sure Aziraphale would really have the privacy he’d need for such a thing in the baths), he started off after him. He found Aziraphale sitting on the wooden bench against the wall, fully dressed, his eyes closed. The scent of something pungent and cloying hung around him. Crowley saw a small bottle of oil sitting next to him. It was labeled_ silphium _._

_Crowley tugged on his black tunic before he leaned over to pick up the bottle and give it a sniff. It was the same scent he was wearing. It made him feel strange, as if the power was leaching from his corporation._

_“Ugh,” he said. “You...you like that?”_

_“It’s medicinal,” Aziraphale said._

_“What’s it_ do _? You don’t need_ medicine _, angel.”_

_“I...well, I rather like the scent. Don’t you?”_

_“Would have thought that was obvious,” Crowley said, wrinkling his nose. It smelled like a dead animal, but one that had been drizzled with honey and peppermint tea. It smelled like Hell itself, literally, like brimstone. But also, inexplicably, like the thrash of white wings, like lightning._

_“Well,” Aziraphale said. “Perhaps you wouldn’t.”_

_He opened his eyes then, and looked at Crowley. His eyes were soft, limpid. They beguiled—no, they_ begged _Crowley for something. Crowley didn’t know what; he didn’t know what to do. So he leaned in and kissed Aziraphale’s lips. The kiss was light, chaste, but he could feel himself growing hard at the thought that Aziraphale might be too, that he knew now, what it looked like when he was._

_Then there was a hand on his shoulder, a clucked tongue._

_A “_ Crowley _, no.”_

_A week later, Crowley left Rome. He couldn’t stand the smell of the silphium everywhere, reminding him of what he could not have. He did take a plant with him, though. They were odd things, he told himself, Hellish, that was why, that was the only reason._

_He never smelled his silphium plant. Except when he did, when he wanted to weaken himself, and remember._

* * *

He nearly falls to his knees there in front of all these people. They seem so angry, so loud. He stumbles into the nearest shop and looks around. Makeup, haircare, perfume. White and black stripes along the walls, clean, spare letters that read _Sephora_.

He doesn’t stop long enough for someone to ask to help him—he can see them looking at him, giving him that look that the Americans all seem to have for him since he’s been here, a look that says they see something they very much don’t like.

Whatever. Crowley doesn’t need them. He doesn’t need anybody or anything. Especially not some bloody angel who can’t even be arsed to spend two Christmases in a row with him. (“Our Christmas together,” he’d said, like it had meant something.) Who can’t even be arsed to give him a phone call after six thousand fucking years.

“Can I help you?” one of the Sephora humans says, cutting him off before he can reach the counter. His mouth opens and he looks around before letting his eyes fall on them. He very much approves of the color scheme of their uniform.

“Ye—I need a perfume,” he says.

“Oh, OK, well, our fragrances are this way,” the human gestures. “Was there one in particular you were looking for?”

“Silphium,” says Crowley.

“Oh—I haven’t heard of that one.”

“It smells like peppermint mixed with mud,” Crowley says.

“Oh—”

“But if you added in sulphur, and ozone. Bit of dead animal. Bit of honey.”

“Right. Look, we don’t—”

“Are you going to tell me you don’t have it?” Crowley asks.

“I’m going to ask if you’re joking with me,” they say. They do not look amused. Crowley is though. He doesn’t have to buy things from these people if he wants them. He can have this, can make it for himself. But this comes more naturally to him. And this is much more fun.

He deserves a little fun, even if it’s _all_ he deserves right now.

“We definitely don’t,” says the human.

“Then what’s that?” Crowley waves a hand at a display now standing in the center of the fragrance section, a large, spindly yellow flower with tiny buds, surrounded by little brown bottles with elegant gold spray heads. A delicate script on the bottles and on a sign underneath the plants reads _Silphium_.

Crowley samples it first, spraying himself liberally and enjoying the way the Sephora human backs away from the scent, the way the whole store clears out, and people outside the store move to the other side of the mall as they pass.

Eventually, he buys a bottle, then blinks away the display as he saunters out.

* * *

There is the satisfaction of having it, of having confused some humans. But the Silphium just reminds him of what he’s missing. He sprays his pillow with it and lies down, remembering the way the stuff seems to make him feel drained. Perhaps it’s for the best. He sleeps. When he wakes, he sprays it again and sleeps again, longer this time. He dreams of Rome, of Aziraphale’s body, warm and bare, pressed against his, that lovely, thick erection digging into his thigh, rubbing against Crowley’s own. He dreams of the sound of his name in Aziraphale’s voice, that breathy moan he makes when he eats something particularly good. He dreams of the warmth in his arms that he’d dreamt of every night in Wessex after they’d made the Arrangement. Aziraphale’s face, pink with emotion and exertion, his head pillowed on Crowley’s chest.

It does not hurt to dream of these things when he is sleeping the way it does when he is awake.

He does not know how long the cycle goes: sleep and wake and spray, and sleep and wake and spray. He only knows that when he wakes and finds there is no more Silphium left with which to ensure his dreams are the kind he wants, he checks his mobile again and there is nothing from Aziraphale.

Six thousand years.

 _This is the way the world ends_ , he thinks. And though he knows what comes next, he refuses to whimper, refuses to give in.

He flies back to London.

As soon as he’s there, he feels it, some kind of twist in the fabric of something inside him. Something _not_ him. Something painful and wrenching from Aziraphale, because he knows the angel when he feels him. It’s the same way he knows, when he gets to the bookshop, that even amid the inexplicable smell of silphium (because Aziraphale’s plant had died not ten years after Crowley had given it to him), the angel is not there.

But the smell...it calls to him. As much as Crowley wants to look for Aziraphale, the smell is already here. And so, perhaps, is some explanation. Crowley raises a hand to the handle of the bookshop’s door, and it opens to him. Inside, there are pots of single, lacy flowers, like tiny shining suns, on every surface not covered with books. The smell sends him to his knees.

He’d saved the seeds, Crowley realizes. He’d planted them. He’d wanted, like Crowley, to remember.

 _Oh_ , Crowley thinks, _oh, fuck. I’ve been an idiot._

His hand closes around one of the pots, a familiar thing. Not the original urn he’d had it in in Wessex, already crumbling even then, but a porcelain thing, ornate with painting of birds, the pot he’d given Aziraphale when he’d first opened the shop. Even amid their new freedom, Aziraphale had wanted to _remember._ Crowley lifts it into his arms, his fingers caressing it where he knows Aziraphale had. He will return, and when he does, Crowley will be here, no matter how long it takes.

The silphium, as ever, weakens him.

* * *

When Aziraphale comes back just hours later, he finds Crowley asleep on the sofa, his skin graying, and his hands clutching at the plant, holding it crushed in his fingers, pressed against his face.

He whispers, “Aziraphale,” not “angel,” and Aziraphale knows then, what a fool he has been, to ever think that that was what had mattered. He takes the flowers from Crowley, and wipes his hands clean, studying them: the hands of a demon, hands that have helped him, saved him, comforted him, the whole of his time on Earth.

And Aziraphale had let him go.

* * *

_He’d had the realization long ago. it was so obvious how Crowley delighted in the forbidden. Aziraphale had felt lonely. Had thought, at first, that a demon must have some sort of ill intent, and later, had marveled that this one had not, at least not where he was concerned._

_Then there had been Rome._

_He was glad to see Crowley there. When they finished their wine and oysters, and had a walk around the city, he found that he still did not want Crowley to go, and so he’d suggested the baths—always a popular place to meet and talk._

_He had not expected what had happened there. Even amid the shock and shame he’d felt, there had been a dawning realization: This was a sort of game for Crowley. It was the explanation Aziraphale had been looking for, and it had made itself apparent. Their friendship, or whatever this was, was forbidden, and_ that _was why Crowley pursued it, allowed it. Or however you might think of it._

_It had taken him longer to realize that this was more dangerous than letting himself be corrupted, even if just a little, for the sake of an enduring companion. it had taken him until less than a century before the world would have ended to acknowledge to himself that he loved Crowley. It hurt, but he supposed the heartbreak was no more than he deserved, too weak, as he was, to refrain from indulging a demon. From letting a demon indulge him._

_But after the apocalypse was averted, he waited for Crowley to try again, to woo him. For the first time, he was purely elated at the thought. He imagined the look of surprise, of joy on his face when Aziraphale gave in to him. He’d wanted to now for so long._

_But Crowley did not try, and it was obvious why not. It was no longer forbidden. It no longer mattered to him._

_So he tried to move on, not to be too demanding, too expectant of Crowley, of what he might offer. When he felt himself slipping, he pulled back._

_And then, one day, all of a sudden, there was nothing._

_But for the nothingness to have been sudden, he realized, there must have been something there before._

_What was gone—it was Crowley, yes. Crowley was gone, but how did Aziraphale know? The absence of a warmth, a tug almost, but a gentle one, the way a set of arms might feel if they were already fitted around you, snug and welcome. The way it might feel to look into the eyes of someone you wanted, and see that they wanted you too. And big, and bottomless, like the expanse of space._

_Aziraphale gasped with the realization. He went to Crowley’s flat, but he didn’t even need to go inside to see that the demon was gone—not dead—Aziraphale checked, his unnecessary heart racing, his breath catching in his throat. Just gone._

_His fault, always his fault._

_In the bookshop, he went through his things, drawers and closets full of memories. Crowley had always been the one to keep plants. But Aziraphale had a set of seeds he’d been saving, and he needed something to nurture. Something to help him remember, and hope._

* * *

Now, he takes Crowley’s hand, wiped clean from the pollen of that long-extinct bloom, and presses it to his lips.

Crowley stirs, coughs. Aziraphale frowns at the sound of it, but when Crowley opens his eyes, big and gold and full of hope, Aziraphale can’t help but smile.

“I’m sorry I left,” Crowley says, “didn’t know.”

“Oh, my love,” Aziraphale says. “Neither did I. Until you were gone. And I thought—well. I was wrong.”

“Not till I got here,” Crowley says. “Saw the flowers. Drain me, they do, but I… _needed_ …oh, fuck, angel, they remind me of you. Always did.”

Aziraphale bends forward and kisses his lips, lets his mouth bloom into Crowley's the way he had wanted in an apodyterium in Rome more than a thousand years before.

* * *

Crowley does whimper then, but it’s not the world that ends, only the version of it that had felt like an endless slog, a fruitless hope for nothing. Because as they kiss, the smell of the silphium fades, and Crowley feels Aziraphale crackling with ethereal power, feels his own power surging up and into him. When his hands find the buttons of Aziraphale’s waistcoat, Aziraphale does not say no, Aziraphale does not say _Crowley_ , as if Crowley has done something that must be stopped. Aziraphale does not tell Crowley that he is not a fool, that he cannot fraternize with a demon. He does not tell Crowley he is going too fast, and Crowley, for once, does not stop, does not regret not stopping.

Aziraphale’s flesh is warm under his palms when he rests them there, against the broad expanse of soft skin, skimming over soft, white-down hair. Aziraphale’s fingers are deft and sure as they flick open Crowley’s belt and slide it away before opening his trousers, finding him within, warm and wet and ready.

The collision of their flesh is gentle and ferocious, soft skin and the brush of wings, and the burning collision of ethereal and infernal power, roaring through their essences as they tangle somewhere on some invisible plane, even as their bodies roll together in plain sight.

Aziraphale says _yes,_ says it like a refrain, and Crowley wants to sing praises he’d never, even as an angel, offered to God.

When it is over, they lie together on the sofa, wrapped together in soft blankets. Aziraphale kisses him absently, over and over, his temples, his jaw, his lips, his hair.

Crowley feels strong, soft. The silphium is gone, but the feeling of it still lingers, emanating from their skin. He smells of Aziraphale—not of ozone and honey, but of paper, and tea, and dried, pressed roses. And Aziraphale smells of him—not brimstone, but leather and white pepper cologne. He buries his face in Aziraphale’s chest and breathes deeper. Aziraphale lets him, pushes in closer and kisses the back of his head. This angel is a part of him, he knows. Will always be a part of him. But more than that—he’s a part of Aziraphale, too. There is no more silphium anymore, anywhere. No seeds, hoarded and saved for just in case. Because there’s nothing they need now but the truth: their love, holding them together as he can see now that it always had. Six thousand years, Crowley thinks, and the world had only ended for silphium.


End file.
